Key technologies to enable terabit-scale digital radio-over-fiber systems

With the approach of the 5G era, stringent requirements are imposed on the data transport solutions, including both of the supported transmission reach and the capacity. Radio-over-fiber technologies are considered to be promising candidates to cope with both aspects, owing to the low-loss and broad-bandwidth nature of the optical fibers. Meanwhile with such optical transport solutions, signals can be collected from the distributed remote radio sites and processed in a centralized manner. In this report, we target on the digital radio-over-fiber systems, and discuss about several key technologies, focusing on the aspects of coding and transmission, which could potentially enable terabit-scale data transport.